If given £100,000, nine out of 10 of us would save more than half of the money – £56,000.

But when it comes to the rest we would mix pleasure with good financial sense – spending on cars and holidays, but also paying down the mortgage and improving our homes.

New research from SunLife also found that if given £100k, three quarters of those surveyed said they would spend around £20k (£19,568) of the total amount.

And a whopping 50% of them would use that money to make home improvements, while seven in 10 would go on holiday and four in 10 would buy a new car.

Around a third said they would use the money to paying off debt; on average they would spend around a quarter of the money paying off their mortgage (£19,860) and other debts (£4,577).

Ian Cooper, head of savings at SunLife, said: “It is really encouraging to see that if we were in the lucky positon to inherit, or perhaps win a large amount of cash, most of us would do the sensible thing – pay off debts and save.

“You will rarely be able to earn more on your savings than you will pay on your borrowings, so paying off debts before saving is a good rule of thumb.

“However, you don’t want to be in a situation where you have no savings at all to fall back on, and, as long as you are keeping up with your mortgage payments and credit card bills it is fine to save and have some debt.”